The Political Machine

"Nice, moderate game"

The Political Machine (PM) is a political computer game based partially off of Stardock's previous similarly-titled game, The Corporate Machine. In PM, you play as one of the two candidates for president of the United States and (obviously) your goal is to win the election.

The game is played in a series of 41 turns ("weeks"). Each week, you can spend your limited resources to create political advertisements, give speeches, hire consultants, or any number of about a dozen different choices. You are limited in your funds (advertisements and buildings cost lots of cash to create and maintain) and "stamina," which are basically action points--your candidate can only cram so much into a day's work.

You'll spend most of your time traveling from state to state. It's easy to move (and a bit strange--it costs the same to fly from Vermont to New Hampshire as it does to go from Florida to California). Every trip will slightly increase your popularity in your destination state.

You can also fundraise, which increases your cash stores. However, the more times you hit a state, the less money you get each time--and, of course, you raise more money in states that are rich and where you are popular.

Advertisements probably have the biggest impact in the game but also the most expensive--they are played in specific states but their effects can go national. For instance, if you play an advertisement supporting your environmental credentials in California, California will increase their support for you--but so will every other state who cares about the environment, though a little less so. You can run newspaper ads, radio ads, and TV ads, all with increasing cost and effect.

If playing ads doesn't fit in your budget, you can give a speech. Speeches are free and they do the same thing as advertisements, but they are generally of shorter duration and it takes more stamina.

You can also build headquarters, which cost lots of money to build, a good bit to maintain, but their effects are great in the state it is located in. You can even upgrade it to higher levels of organization--again, at higher cost for higher effect.

And, finally, there's Political Capital. Instead of spending your stamina traipsing around the nation, you can close the doors and fill it full of smoke--this is the backslapping, glad-handing part of the game. Alas (or maybe not), it's somewhat abstracted--all you do is convert your stamina points to political capital points at a 3:1 ratio. You can then spend your political capital doing two things: gaining endorsements and hiring consultants.

Endorsements are major organizations (foreign policy institute, feminist group, civil liberties groups, gun lobby) that endorse you. Each organization has two effects: for instance, the Labor endorsement will give you a small bonus against outsourcing jobs and a large one at job growth. Then, every state in the union will give you that bonus. Endorsements are pretty expensive, however, and you can't get them all without contradicting yourself. (Just try to get the feminist endorsement and the religious right endorsement at the same time. You can do it, but you've just wasted a lot of time.)

Consultants have a wide variety of uses. You can hire a Spin Doctor to increase your issue ratings in a state, or hire a Smear Merchant to do the opposite to your opponent. These get more expensive as you buy more.

There are also special events that can grants you bonuses or penalties. Usually these are "extra" consultants that you normally can't buy, like the War Hero or the very powerful Media Darling. Your consultants and your candidate can all move around the board (usually--some consultants can't move once placed).

You can also go on interviews (which can boost your ratings but you can commit a terrible gaffe), pick a vice president (which acts as a mini-version of yourself, traveling from state to state), and read polls.

Pro:

*The game itself runs very smooth and gets points for being short--you can play an election in about a half hour.
*The rules are simple--it can be played pretty much out of the box with only minimal manual consulting.
*There's lots of customization. Your candidate can have high charisma but low minority appeal, or be adept at raising funds but poor with the military.
*It's up-to-date, and Stardock promises to keep it so--you can download new issues, events, etc., to reflect recent polling data from the website. SO far it's been kept up, but time will tell how long this will last.
*It's fun!

Con:
*There's not much diversity in the issues. It's kind of cool to know that the Death Penalty means a lot more in Texas than, say Minnesota, or that Freedom of Speech is important in Massachusetts. But these are far and few between--when in doubt, you can always use the War on Terror as an issue, since every state is concerned about it. And there's plenty of issues where Democrats approve and Republicans disapprove, or vice versa--Abortion, for instance, or the Iraq War--but there is absolutely no reason to even address these issues since you can always fall back on the War on Terror or Deficit Reduction, which everyone approves of.
*Some of the customization of your candidate is a no-brainer. Why anyone wouldn't crank their candidate's stamina to the maximum is beyond me.
*Some things seem really strange. Favorite So bonuses don't seem to mean much--my candidate from Pennsylvania lost Pennsylvania, which doesn't seem really realistic. (Granted, Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000, and George McGovern lost South Dakota, but these are extremely rare cases.) And while the data is reflected properly in the state data, it still doesn't add up--Utah going for the Democrats, even if the Democrat only visited it once? Massachusetts going Republican even if the Democrat wins overall?
*Some customization is lost--there's a randomizing game, where Vermont might be conservative, Alaska has 20 electoral points, and Texas supports open immigration, but there's little control oer what can and can't be used--it's basically all or nothing.
*Some people have had problems with their video cards operating this game. I have not really encountered it.

Overall, the pros outweigh the cons by a significant amount. It seems to have infinite replayability--there are historical and fantasy games if you get bored--but at a value price of around $20, you really can't go wrong.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/29/04